


What She Wants

by Yoiko



Category: Gundam Wing
Genre: F/M, Gundam Legends, Gundam Legends 2020: Just When You Thought it was Safe to go Back in the Water, Proceed with caution
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-31
Updated: 2020-10-31
Packaged: 2021-03-08 03:00:34
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,222
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26868559
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Yoiko/pseuds/Yoiko
Summary: Had she picked him because she felt sorry for him, or perhaps because she perceived him as a challenge?  It was possible.
Comments: 4
Kudos: 5
Collections: Gundam Legends 14: Just When You Thought It Was Safe To Go Back In the Water





	What She Wants

“I love you,” she said, breathless from dancing and flushed from champagne. “More than anything.” Her eyes were bright and a few rebellious wisps of hair had straggled from the elaborate updo, and Heero hoped he would remember this moment, and her effervescent happiness, as long as he lived.

“I love you, too,” he replied, brushing at the loose strands of hair and tucking them gently behind her ear. “My beautiful wife.” He drew her into a fast spin in an irrepressible moment of pure joy, her wide skirts sweeping over the gleaming surface of the ballroom floor. There were comments and even scattered applause from the onlookers, but like everyone else in the room, Heero had eyes only for her. They had booked a historic mansion for the wedding; the house itself was a museum and generally the only way to enter it was to pay for a tour, but it had been built by one of her ancestors several generations prior. Heero had been completely uninterested in most of the logistics aside from security, and didn’t even have anyone to invite, but it had pleased Relena to think that her great-great-great grandmama had glided down the very staircase where she would make her grand entrance as a bride. In the end, even though a big wedding was basically his worst nightmare, there wasn’t much that Heero wouldn’t do to please Relena.

She spun with him gracefully and laughed, giddy and completely sure of herself, no longer the needy, clingy, teenage girl she’d been when he first met her. He’d found her so annoying and thoroughly off-putting the day he transferred to her sophomore class. It had been unsettling enough, walking into the grandiose lecture hall at a stiff private school where the offspring of the obscenely wealthy went to learn reading, writing, and the most proper rules of stiff etiquette, and watching said over-indulged offspring turn to observe his entrance as if they were one single entity with a hundred heads. It had been worse recognizing, as surely everyone on the campus had recognized, how completely out of place he seemed with his secondhand books and his do-it-yourself haircut and his ill-fitting uniform and the foul-tempered scowl that simply dared anyone to call him a charity case. 

He had grudgingly endured the skepticism of the professors, who almost unanimously doubted his abilities and his right to be there. He had equally endured, with stoic silence, the snubs and twittering insults of his fellow classmates. He’d had bigger concerns, then, and couldn’t have cared less that all of them hated him.

All except Relena. Relena, the spoiled little princess, the meanest of the mean girls who ruled the school like life-sized bloodthirsty Barbie dolls. She had set her sights on Heero from the minute he entered the lecture hall and was forced by the subtly sneering professor to introduce himself and apologize for his tardiness before being allowed to find his way to the nearest vacant seat. Heero hadn’t so much as glanced in her direction, too busy fuming to notice her big, blue eyes or her sympathetic smile.

Had she picked him because she felt sorry for him, or perhaps because she perceived him as a challenge? It was possible. She’d almost certainly never been told “no” in her life before Heero came along, and she heard it from him often in that first year. No, he wasn’t going to her birthday party. No, he didn’t want to carry her books. No, he didn’t want to join her for lunch. No, he wasn’t interested in afternoon tea with her and her hyena-pack of girl friends. No, he didn’t care that Dennis thought he was being unnecessarily rude to her, and after he’d won the little impromptu duel Dennis provoked, Dennis decided he didn’t care as much as he’d thought he did, either.

“You know, she gets what she wants,” Dennis had said, spitting in his general direction. “You might as well get used to the idea.”

Heero had sneered at that, but now, looking into the unfathomably deep blue eyes of his new wife, he had to think that if she always got what she wanted, he was deeply and profoundly glad that she wanted _him_.

~~~~~

Their first disagreement as newlyweds came just after the (lamentably short) honeymoon, and it was really more of an old argument being revisited.

"I’m just saying it’s beneath you," Relena repeated. "You’re my husband. You don’t have to work at that agency or deal with those people." By "those people," she meant his fellow agents, who at one time he would have called his friends. 

"I understand that," Heero replied, with careful patience, buttoning up his uniform shirt. "But they need me. I have skills that are valuable as a Preventer."

"I need you more than they do," Relena argued. "And you have skills that are valuable to me, right here." She patted the bed to make her meaning clear.

Heero blushed, but he refused to be sidetracked. "The Preventer Agency is important to keeping the peace, and we need it to succeed just as much as we need ESUN to succeed. I can’t just abandon them when they’ve barely even started."

"I don’t like this." Relena was in a full-on pout, now, as Heero stooped to put on his shoes. "Heero."

"You have a busy day ahead; you won’t even notice I’m gone," Heero said. "I’ll see you tonight."

She leaned away rather than let him kiss her goodbye, and he left for work feeling sad and unsettled.

~~~~~

Relena didn’t give him the Silent Treatment; she was never going to refrain from telling him what she thought. She gave him the "Hands Off" treatment instead. She continued bringing up the subject, and refused to let him touch her. She even kicked him out of their bed. After several weeks of constant conversation (some might call it nagging) and touch starvation, Heero caved. 

It was really the need for touch more than anything else; Heero had been raised without much physical contact or comfort, and had taken to it during their honeymoon like a man dying of thirst who had just been given his first sip of water. It wasn’t just sex; it was physical contact of any kind. When he was touching Relena’s skin, touching her hair, even just holding her hand, all was right with his world.

"Fine," he said at last, miserable. "I’ll give them my notice tomorrow."

"Heero!" Relena melted, and hugged him to her, and he let out a breath he hadn’t realized he was holding. Why had he even wanted so much to keep working as a Preventer? It was silly. They had plenty of people. They didn’t need him.

~~~~~

Heero was cheerful as he typed up his resignation letter. It was just a few quick lines of text, but it felt like lifting an immense weight off his shoulders. He didn’t even stay to see the shock on Une’s face when he turned it in; he headed right back to his desk to work on a series of reports he hadn’t had a chance to complete. He figured that before he left, he wanted to be sure he’d tied up all his loose ends.

He worked steadily through the morning, oblivious to the flurry of activity around him—there was a quick, informal conference in Une’s office, and while he was aware that the other former Gundam pilots had gathered there, it never occurred to him that they might be talking about _him_. The fledgling Preventer agency had a million irons in the fire, trying to locate and track problems before they could build to combat situations. Chief among their concerns were pockets of unrest that threatened the newly-fledged ESUN and its mission of peaceful, democratic governance. There were dozens of projects involving the Gundam pilots that could have been the focus of a quick brainstorming session. Many of those projects would have included himself, but not all, and while he no longer enjoyed a close relationship with any of them, he didn’t mistrust them, either.

~~~~~

"Heero, can we talk?" Heero looked up, his fingers still flying over the keyboard as he finished his sentence.

"Quatre," he said in wary acknowledgement. It suddenly clicked that the conference had been about him, and that they had sent their diplomat to negotiate. Preventer wasn’t going to let him go that easily. 

"You’re due for a coffee break," Quatre began. "The Gunderson report can wait a few minutes. Join me?"

Heero sighed. He really just wanted to finish, but it was true that he had not yet taken his scheduled break, and Une had stressed the importance of taking their breaks as scheduled. Some kind of legal requirement about not working your people to death.

"Fine," he said, knowing that there was nothing for it but to let Quatre have his say. He locked down his computer and walked with Quatre to the break room, which was oddly empty. This was looking more and more like a conspiracy of some sort, but he supposed if one of the others had resigned, he would be concerned enough to want to discuss it.

"I heard you turned in your resignation," Quatre offered, apparently in recognition of Heero’s impatience with any kind of dancing around the subject.

"I did."

"Are you… okay?"

"I feel fine, Quatre," Heero said. Since it was supposed to be a coffee break, he went ahead and poured himself a cup.

"It’s just… we never really get to see you any more."

"You see me here every day," Heero pointed out, taking a sip and only then realizing how tightly wound he’d been. He’d needed a break, and a good, hot cup of coffee.

"Heero." Quatre was frowning slightly as he reached for his own cup. "Can I be blunt with you?"

"It usually works best that way," Heero said, with a small, wry smile. "Spit it out."

"All of this has happened really quickly," Quatre blurted in a rush. "In the past two months, you’ve had this whirlwind engagement, and you’ve cut off ties with all your friends, and now you’re leaving the agency you were helping to build…"

"I’m a newly married—"

"I know, but," Quatre interrupted, laying a hand on his arm to emphasize how serious he was. "You don’t have to change everything about yourself just because you marry. She married _you_. Surely she didn’t intend that you aren’t allowed contact with your friends, or work that satisfies you. Heero, we miss you. I’ve missed you. You’re one of my best friends in the Universe, and I hardly even get to talk to you any more."

"Quatre…" Heero was honestly touched. He had kind of fallen out of contact with his friends, but he loved them dearly. They were his comrades in arms. There were things about his life experience that literally nobody else could possibly understand. The distance between them had hurt. Not having them at his wedding had hurt.

"Just… don’t cut us out of your life?" Quatre asked. "Please?"

"Of course you’re part of my life," Heero said, but in honesty he had to admit that they hadn’t been. Why had he distanced himself from his friends?

"And with the resignation… is there any chance you’d reconsider? Or at least give us more notice?"

"I’ll think about it," Heero promised. Quatre smiled at him, looking relieved, and changed the subject then to a joke Rashid had told him, and the rest of the coffee break felt a lot more like the normal, easy flow of conversation between friends that Heero hadn’t even realized he was missing.

~~~~~

"Did you turn in your notice today?" That was the first thing Relena wanted to know, when he arrived a few minutes late for dinner.

"Yes, but they really need me. I don’t think I’m ready to leave Preventer."

"Heero, will you just forget about Preventer, already? We have more important things to think about." She had crossed the room to put her arms around him, even though she was obviously annoyed. Prickly as it was, he couldn’t help but melt into the embrace.

"But they need me," he said.

"I need you more. Just tell them you’re leaving, and that’s that."

"I have to at least give them a month notice. It will take that long to find and begin training a replacement."

Relena scoffed. "Fine! Give them notice! Just get it over with so we can move on with our lives!"

"I’ll let them know first thing tomorrow," Heero promised, and that was the end of it.

~~~~~

Over the next week, Heero made an effort to avoid being cornered by his friends, which was easier said than done considering that each of them was both persistent and highly skilled. There were a few uncomfortable conversations, but he stuck to his intention to serve a one-month notice, and gradually they came to grudging acceptance and switched the conversation to the search for a replacement. In between assignments and reports, Heero was kept very busy documenting the hows and whys of his position, so the new person would at least have a few notes to refer to for guidance.

It was easy to remember the promise he’d made Relena. She had started bringing toys into their bedroom to "spice things up," and the restraints she used on him often left marks. It didn’t really do anything for Heero to be tied up (it was actually quite a turn-off, considering his experiences with shackles and the negative associations he’d naturally made), but Relena spun out such fantasies of him being helpless, and acting them out seemed to make her happy… and he wanted very much to make Relena happy. So he had to wear long sleeves, buttoned at the wrists, and that was enough of a reminder to help him stick to his guns.

~~~~~

The next week, which was week two of Heero’s notice, there was an assassination attempt against Relena. She was exiting the building after a contentious ESUN meeting when a sniper opened fire. Pargan, who was still serving as her chauffeur, was shot, and a Preventer agent who had been working as security, Agent Beech, was seriously injured. The sniper was long gone by the time security forces rallied, and although she was becoming more and more unpopular among the people who had once unironically called her the Queen of the World, it wasn’t clear that Relena had actually been the target until an anonymous screed was released to the press, attacking her as a power-hungry, would-be dictator.

Naturally, there were calls to disband Preventer, which clearly hadn’t prevented the attack against one of the Earth Sphere’s most powerful politicians. All of the Preventer agents were feeling the pressure, but Heero was beside himself. Relena hadn’t been hurt, but she _could_ have been, and he hadn’t been there to protect her. How could he fail to prevent an attack against his own wife? What was the point of any of his life’s work, if it hadn’t stopped this kind of violence? His decision to leave was further solidified, because he would be better off working directly as security for Relena than spinning his wheels as a Preventer. He’d always felt that what he was doing was important, but that was only true as long as Relena and her colleagues were free to act in the people’s interests… and he needed to be close to Relena, close enough to be sure she was safe, close enough to touch her.

He couldn’t leave Preventer with this unresolved. He tripled the security around Relena (which infuriated her and earned him some more hands-off time, because she wanted him to quit Preventer outright and stay with her), and threw himself into tracking down the would-be assassin or assassins. He needed to be able to turn in his badge knowing that whoever was responsible for this attack was taken down. 

The problem was that although Relena had once been immensely popular for a politician, there were now plenty of people out there who had negative opinions about her. Heero tracked down false lead after false lead, recognizing that he was really on a wild goose chase but incapable of reining in his obsession. It had been almost a week of maddening fruitlessness when he got a message from Quatre asking him to stop by the Winner house that evening. "Have info re that thing you were working on, need to see you in person."

Heero understood that what it meant was that Quatre thought their communications might be monitored. Was the attacker someone inside Preventer? All the Preventer agents had been so carefully vetted, and while Heero had not ruled out the possibility in his paranoia, he had nonetheless ranked it pretty low in terms of probability. If the sniper was a Preventer, though, there was no doubt that Quatre would be the first one to sniff them out. 

Heero let Relena know he would be late for dinner, glumly accepted her irritation with him, and left for Quatre’s place.

~~~~~

"Would you care for some tea?" Quatre asked politely, already pouring. Heero shrugged indifferently, but took a sip when Quatre put the cup in front of him, and waited to speak until after Quatre had seated himself.

"Why did you send for me?" he asked. "I'm busy with..."

"Yes, I know," Quatre interrupted. "The assassination attempt on Relena. I can help you with that."

"How?" Heero asked. Quatre raised his tea cup and drank a little, and Heero mimicked his movements impatiently. The tea wasn't very good; the blend was strange, and had a sour, almost bitter aftertaste.

"I have privileged information regarding the case," Quatre said, and looked at Heero directly. "You’ve been focused very narrowly on several specific violent outbreaks, and you seem to have ignored much of the more global news. We’ve purposely had you working on the trees rather than the forest. Were you aware that Relena was exerting control over anyone she comes into direct contact with? And did you realize the extent to which the ESUN is already corrupted? She’s still got some sway with the masses, but that is changing as people recognize how inflexible and unrealistic some of her ideas are."

"What…?"

"The effect diminishes over time," Quatre continued. "The longer the subject is kept separate from her, the more they come back to themselves. But she has already undermined so many of the failsafes the ESUN had in place. Even if we eliminate her now, it will be the work of years to return the political mechanisms to their intended balance, if ESUN survives at all."

Heero blinked, and shook his head; his ears were ringing, and somehow he couldn't seem to think straight. "I don't understand..."

"To put it simply, my dear Heero, a Preventer has to prevent problems like this, and where you go, Relena is sure to follow. This time she won't escape."

Heero stared in horror at his tea cup, then at the man he'd thought was an ally. "You won't... be able to keep me long..." he muttered. Quatre caught Heero as he sagged bonelessly out of his chair, and lowered him gently to the floor.

"Long enough," he whispered.

~~~~~

When Heero came to, he was on the couch with his head in Quatre’s lap, with Quatre’s fingers carding through his hair, and Duo and Wufei were holding his hands, and Trowa was touching his bare ankle where his uniform trouser had hiked up. Their hands were warm, and the skin-to-skin contact made him feel like himself for the first time in a very long time.

"How are you feeling?" Quatre asked.

"Like shit." Heero thought about sitting up, and decided against it. "It’s worse than I anticipated."

"We’ve been calling it 'the Relena Effect,'" Duo said. "Really all she has to do is lay a finger on you, and you go all starry-eyed and do whatever she says. I mean, not just you. It works on just about everybody. Like, all she has to do at an ESUN meeting is shake everybody’s hands, and they’re doing whatever she says even when it makes no sense. But she sure seems to make a point of putting the whammy on you, Heero."

"It all seemed to make sense at the time," Heero muttered, thinking back over the past few months. "It’s not that she possesses me or anything, just that… suddenly I want everything she says I want."

"This is troubling." Wufei had noticed the bruising on Heero’s wrist, and pushed his shirtsleeve up to examine it. "What the hell happened?"

"Kinky bedroom shit." Heero could feel his face heating up in a blush, and consoled himself a little that Wufei was obviously regretting that question. "I think… it’s kind of a way of punishing me, for not just leaving Preventer outright."

"You are uniquely stubborn, and that’s been our only saving grace," Trowa said. "This has gone far enough. We could have lost you. If you actually left Preventer, none of us would be able to get within earshot, let alone close enough to touch you."

"So what’s the plan now?" Heero reluctantly pulled away from his friends enough to sit up, leaning against Quatre, and Duo sat on the coffee table in front of him while the others squeezed onto the sofa.

"We’re going to have to take her out," Duo said, deadly serious. "And I don’t think we should tell you the plan, because if she gets her hooks into you again, she’ll make you want to protect her."

Heero grimaced. It was a good point, but that didn’t make it any easier to hear. "She’ll look for me here," he said. "I told her I was coming to see you."

"It’s okay." Quatre gave him a reassuring squeeze. "We’ve got this."

~~~~~

The problem with the best-laid plans is that, if you worked out your strategy based on inaccurate data, it can all go sideways before you have a chance to adapt. The Winner Residence was a veritable fortress, surrounded by Preventer agents and Maguanac soldiers who knew better than to let the Vice Minister touch them. Relena always touched people before "persuading" them to do her bidding, and Quatre always had to lay hands on them to bring them back to themselves, so he’d reasoned that as long as she couldn’t touch them, there was no reason to think that they wouldn’t be fine. There was no reason to think that they couldn’t assassinate the would-be dictator and then argue after the fact that they’d had no idea who was breaking into Master Winner’s private home.

The flaw in the plan became evident when Relena first set foot on the grounds. Each one of Quatre’s loyal troops lowered their weapons and fell into step behind the Vice Minister as she marched up the sidewalk, because Relena was not Quatre and her power did not work in the same way at all. Quatre and the others, forewarned by Quatre’s advanced monitoring system, left Heero sitting on the sofa and ran to the front door to face her, weapons drawn.

"Quatre Raberba Winner," Relena said with a tight smile. "I believe you have something that belongs to me."

Quatre tried to raise his pistol, but the weapon was snatched out of his hand before he could even move. He turned and barely had time to catch sight of Heero, furious and very much under Relena’s control, before the Perfect Soldier opened fire.

It didn’t hurt, being shot. He realized that was a bad sign; every injury he’d lived through had hurt. Being run through by Dorothy had certainly hurt. This… just felt cold, and the chill was at least in part from the distant look in Heero’s eyes, barely even a flash of recognition as he stepped over the crumpled bodies of his friends to embrace his wife. Quatre couldn’t move, but from his position, slumped against the wall, he could see the lifeless bodies of Trowa and Wufei, their eyes already dimming. Duo was still moving, struggling to breathe, and Quatre watched as Heero aimed and shot him right between the eyes.

"I’ve missed you," Relena was saying, reaching out to caress Heero’s cheek, and Heero leaned into the touch helplessly. "You had me so worried."

"I’m so sorry to have worried you," Heero replied. He turned and looked down at Quatre, who could do nothing but stare back.

"Heero." Relena’s voice was soft, and there was a small smile curving her lips. "I want him out of our lives, permanently."

Quatre looked at Heero and then quickly closed his eyes; he wanted the last thing he saw to be Heero’s face, not the gun. When it came, the final bullet didn’t hurt.

Heero shuddered in horror and dropped the gun, but then Relena was holding him, wrapping her arms around him and telling him everything would be okay, and that alone was enough to make him feel better. He had to believe her when she said it would all be fine, that they’d go home and begin their happy lives together, finally free of interference. He believed it, because she wanted him to believe it… and Relena always got what she wanted.


End file.
